“It’s a real rocket and I like it,” West says, giving his daily driver a nine out of 10 rating. He especially likes the all-wheel drive.

The purchase was a conscious effort on West’s part, a vote of confidence for the American manufacturer. “I kind of swung over to Chrysler products to give them a chance to recover,” West says. “I’ve got a couple of Dodge Hemis — I’ve got a Dodge pickup and I’ve been driving a couple of those. I like the Hemi engines — you know, you lean off the gas and it cuts down to four cylinders and you save on the mileage.”

His 300C is based on the Mercedes E-Class chassis and has Chrysler’s MDS, to which West refers, that allows the Hemi to run on four cylinders, especially when maintaining steady speeds.

West also owns two pickup trucks — a 2005 Toyota Tundra, which he rates an eight out of 10 rating and a 2006 Dodge Ram that gets a six. At his Idaho home during inclement weather, West sometimes drives his 2008 Chrysler Aspen SUV “because much of the year we live in the snow,” he says.

West gives his new SUV a perfect score. “It’s so new and it’s unblemished and has really been really good for our purposes. I’d rate that as a 10. I see nothing wrong with or negative about it at all.”

At that moment, with his emphasis on the words “really” and his deliberate pronunciation and diction, for a nanosecond it feels like I’m talking to Bruce Wayne of the old TV show, when he was deliberating some crime-fighting solution. I can almost see him press that button in the bust to open the bookcase that hid two poles to the Batcave and say, “To the Batpoles.”

“I’ve had good luck with all those products,” West says about his Chrysler cars, and then continues with a chuckle. “I figured as long as Chrysler got a divorce from Mercedes, I wanted to encourage them that life goes on.”

On his daily driver“It looks like a mini Bentley, but for a third of the price,” West says. “But I don’t trick it up with a lot of phony stuff like a Bentley grille or something. You know, with a Hemi engine it’s a rocket. It’s all I need and I’ve had Jaguars and Ferraris and Mercedes, Tahoes, Suburbans. But I like this car.”

Car he learned to drive inAdam West was born in Seattle but grew up in on a wheat ranch in Walla Walla, Washington. So it’s no surprise the car he learned to drive in when he was 12 was the family’s old wheat truck, a 1937 Ford.

“My grandfather and my father had wheat ranches had wheat ranches, so we had quite a few trucks around and a lot of mules,” West says, laughing. “Talk about horsepower, we had mule power.”

Even though the truck had a manual transmission, West says it was easy to learn with because he always wanted to drive as a kid. “I used to spend hours just sitting in an old wreck of a car with a stickshift, I’d just sit there and shift,” West says.

The polar opposite of life in Hollywood, West had to help around the ranch and hauled wheat out around town and tend to cattle. “Farm kids learn to drive early and they get their licenses in parts of the country early, so they can work,” West says. “I wasn’t always this sophisticated.”

First car boughtWest went to Whitman College in Walla Walla, and there he bought his first car. He doesn’t remember the model, but it was a used 1950 Pontiac coupe with an automatic transmission. He painted the car himself — turquoise and black.

“It got me around college and it ran well enough to get a date,” West says, giving the old car a 2.5 rating. Then West bought his first new car around 1953 after saving up money and getting a little help from his grandfather to buy a Chevy coupe.

Favorite driveWest has several favorite drives, which include the Oregon coast and “of course, Big Sur” up California’s Highway 1.

In Oregon, West likes to take Highway 101, the old Oregon coast route, south from Cannon Beach. “It’s winding in many parts, but it’s beautiful,” West says. “There are a lot of side roads that go up over the coast range and those are really a fun drive, if you’ve got a car that’s responsive.”

Another great drive is the Columbia Gorge, along Columbia River. West has two other favorite road trips: One is from Walla Walla to Portland, down the Columbia River — Highway 12 to Highway 730, which goes to the Umatilla junction; he just follows the Oregon side, which is Highway 730.

“It is magnificent,” West says, slowly enunciating the first two words for effect.

The second favorite drive is from Walla Walla on highway 12 going west and north to the junction near the Tri Cities of Richland-Pasco-Kennewick, where the Snake River merges with the Columbia River “and becomes that mighty, mighty Columbia. Lewis and Clark went down there and they hit the coast at the end of it in Astoria. That’s a great drive, too.”

Other carsDuring the years he played Batman on TV, West lived in Malibu and owned Corvettes. Throughout the run of “Batman” and for several years afterward, Chevrolet gave West whatever car he wanted and he felt the best was the Corvette.

“They used to give me a Corvette for a year; it was wonderful. They gave me new ones all the time. It really spoiled me. That’s why now that I’m middle-aged, I have no midlife crisis. I went through it at a younger age,” West says, with a chuckle.

But West usually rode his Triumph Bonneville motorcycle to and from the set. I ask why, was there traffic? “That was part of it,” he replies. “And I just enjoyed the breeze.”

“Those years were such intense pressure and so many hours and demands on my time that I was lucky to get on my Triumph and head back to my apartment in Malibu,” West says. “Half the time, I had to sleep on the lot. I had a cottage on the lot. They were good to me.”

After “Batman” ended its run, West finally had more time and attended the Jim Russell Racing School. He bought a 1970 Jaguar XKE, with a softtop, which he wishes he hadn’t sold. “I liked that. It was beautiful to look at,” West recalls.

An even bigger regret is selling his 1974 Ferrari 308 GT4. “I had that wonderful red wedge-shaped Ferrari 308 GT4 when we lived in the Palisades,” West recalls fondly. “I loved it.” I ask why he sold the Dino. “I don’t know. I think I got a Mercedes something. I should’ve kept it, of course. How many people can really say that — ‘I wish I’d kept that car.'”

One of West’s neighbors at the time in the Pacific Palisades was a young Richard Griot. “One day, I said, ‘Richard, here are the keys. I want you to drive the car,'” West says.

Griot got the bug after that drive, which made such an indelible impression that he later even bought that same model. He went on to create the multi-million-dollar empire of Griot’s Garage, selling car supplies and becoming a celebrity in the car world, with his own extensive car collection.

“It’s ruined my whole life since then,” says Griot, laughing about that first drive with West. He has a picture of himself and West in front of Griot’s Ferrari and says: “It was exactly how I remember it. He’s the most brilliant man you’ll talk to.”

BatmobileWhen asked what was the best car he’s ever owned, West pauses to think and says quietly, “Golly. Well, the best car is the Batmobile,” he chuckles.

I ask if he really drove one of the world’s most recognizeable TV cars, the brainchild of George Barris, built from a Lincoln Futura. “I sure did. The Batmobile wasn’t a stickshift and it was a challenge to drive, believe me,” West says.

“You know why I like the Batmobile? It made me rich and famous,” West says, with a laugh. Smart answer, I say.

When asked to elaborate why it was such a difficult car to drive, West says the car didn’t respond very well. “It was heavy and the suspension was difficult, to say the least. The suspension balance was off a bit. And braking — it wasn’t sharp. Because it was a renovated or adapted show car, that to give it that filmic pizzazz, that’s a good phrase isn’t it? Other things had to be sacrificed. And the cockpit was so small that I constantly had bruised shins from jumping in and out.”

So there were some restrictions,” West laughs. “But actually it was a wonderful car because everyone loved it. And when the audience loves it, I love it.”

“We wanted the car to look really sleek and nutty and fun and funny and tricky,” West says. “It had signs everywhere — it had the light on top, it had flames coming out of the back end and a parachute. Batman is its own little world out there spinning in space. It remains that way as does the show and everything about it. It always has that fresh look.”

Part of the reason the old TV series has that fresh look may be that it was the first show aired twice a week, in color, West says. It’s also befitting the Batmobile was created from a car called the Futura. Back in 1966 when the show went on the air, this TV car was a car of the future in more ways than one. It hasn’t escaped West that many cars today have features found in what was once thought of as a car in a TV show.

BatCarphone, BatGPS and BatTiptronics Way before cell-phones became part of the vernacular, the Batcar introduced the car phone. Upon reflection, West does admit, while it was just a TV car, it was a car ahead of its time.

“We had the first car telephone in our Batmobile,” West says. “We also had the first navigation system and the first system that enabled us to make a 180-degree turn at a high speed,” West laughs. “And if you believe that, you keep watching!”

Was the TV screen in the Batmobile indeed used as a GPS system? West replies, “That was anything we wanted it to be, just like the utility belt.”

The Batmobile also had wi-fi as well as BatTiptronics. “There were buttons and knobs everywhere, for whatever we needed, depending on the script,” West says.

Before car alarms and LoJack, there was the Batmobile’s own anti-theft device. And the car made such a splash that consumer groups latched on to gain attention for their own causes. Some viewers may remember Batman fastening his seatbelt after he jumped in the Batmobile. “We got in trouble with some national safety coalition because we didn’t put on our seatbelts,” West says. “But shortly after that, we always made a move as if we were fastening the seatbelt, which we didn’t really have.”

One interesting Hollywood fact is that West, Roger Moore, and James Garner all started at Warner Brothers around the same time, in the late 1950s. “We were all young kids,” West muses.

West also became friends with Steve McQueen, when the two worked on the 1963 movie “Solider in the Rain.” McQueen later visited West on the Batman set with his kids. “There’s a new Mustang, the McQueen Mustang, the Bullitt Mustang — I’m thinking of getting one of those. Just for fun,” West says.

While he’s best known around the world for playing Batman on the series, West keeps busy with other TV roles, including spoofing himself as Mayor Adam West on the animated sitcom “Family Guy.”

On July 1, Fox will release the special-edition Blu-Ray disc of the 1966 film “Batman: The Movie,” featuring West, Burt Ward as Robin, Cesar Romero as the Joker, Frank Gorshin as the Riddler, Burgess Meredith as the Penguin, and Lee Meriwether as Catwoman. West is scheduled to appear on NBC’s “Today Show” on June 30 to promote the disc.